Today on the Pownce Blog, Leah Culverannounced that the service would be closing in a few weeks and that the team would be moving to SixApart, makers of MovableType, TypePad and Vox blogging software. I was really excited about Pownce when it began because it seemed to take the next logical step from where Twitter was and enabled actual sharing of files and media. Perfect for my team and making a more social-enabled workflow. Immediately, I signed up for a Pro Account, to show support (although when it came time to renew, it was difficult and I quickly gave up) and distributed most of my invites. At the time it was the “New Shiny Thing” so a lot of Twitter conversations ported to Pownce. Unfortunately, even before coming out of beta, most ported back.

Acccording to the SixApart announcement, the incredible Leah Culver and Mike Malone are joining the SA engineering team (I see that as hugely important as the annoucement last week that Rael Dornfest is joining the Twitter team). Huge coup for 6A. Many people are taking that to mean that Pownce will be absorbed into the SixApart universe in some fashion, but I don’t think so. Too many microblogging platforms exist, all of which can be imported into any platform – why have another? Especially when there are so many features that I can see this team producing, adding immediate value to 6A – especially to TypePad!

It seems that Pownce Pro users will get their own free TypePad account for a year and that Powncers are able to export their posts and can then import them to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.

Thanks to the Pownce Team for all of their work and a platform that I think might have been slightly aheaad of its time – I’m looking forward to seeing where SixApart goes from here.